Time to try something new!

A few years ago we lost all our egg-laying chickens to raccoons. At first we blamed the dogs, but it was 'coons! The following year we had no chickens and we missed having them and their eggs. It seemed wrong to live on a farm and have to buy eggs. We still raised our own meat chickens, but they were a separate breed that stayed a maximum of 8 weeks before they were either sold or stored in our freezer. They never reached maturity as we always chose Cornish Crosses for our meat birds. Some years we raised 700 of them and, no matter how many we raised, we always had customers willing to buy them, encouraging us to raise even more each year. We stopped raising birds for sale when the price of corn and diesel cut into the profit to such an extent that our effort was not being rewarded.  Now we butcher 35-50 chickens for our own use and that has left us more free time in the summer to pursue other activities that make a greater contribution to our winter readiness or projects that increase our self sufficiency.

Cornish crosses are a fast growing hybrid variety raised specifically to butcher within a specified time. The 'breed' has many flaws and weaknesses when you try to raise them beyond the 8 weeks needed to bring them to plump roaster weight, and while some claim it is possible, we have decided not to try, and each year have ordered our chicks from a hatchery. It has always seemed somewhat paradoxical that we need to buy 50 baby chicks each year in order to raise our own meat. Last year for the first time we raised our own layer chickens from eggs layed in our brooder house. With the aid of a very kind neighbour, we successfully hatched 50 +eggs and increased our layer population accordingly. This made us re-think our ideas on meat chickens.

We did some research into dual-purpose chickens, large heavy-breasted birds that will also lay 250+eggs per year. There are some very pretty birds out there but we decided to keep it simple. We will remove all of the roosters from our layer flock and keep the hens but, as our chicken house can easily accommodate 100 birds, we have decided to invest in 100 new dual-purpose birds. We looked at photos, asked questions, looked at a variety of hatcheries and finally decided on these breeds:

Buff Orpington:

Barred Plymouth Rock:

Black Australorp:

White Plymouth Giant:

25 of each will arrive at the beginning of June. We will have eggs to eat and sell and all but 1 of the most handsome roosters of each breed will be helped to our freezer. Each spring we will hatch 50-75 eggs and repeat the process, supplementing our flock and filling our freezer. I have read that caponising will improve the meat, but I think a well fed, naturally and peacefully raised bird will taste just fine! 

Now we just wait and look forward to the cute chicks.